IP Address Management (IPAM) is a feature that allows you to manage infrastructure servers such as DHCP, DNS, NPS, and DC servers from a centralized location. IPAM also supports the automatic discovery of infrastructure servers of your Active Directory forest. Since it supports the DHCP server management, hence you can manage and track your dynamic and static IPv4 and IPv6 address space centrally. In this post, we will explain how to install and configure IPAM server in Windows Server 2016. The same steps can also be used to configure IPAM server in Windows Server 2012/R2.

Understanding IPAM Lab Setup

Before to configuring IPAM server, first, you need to understand the topology we are going to use. We have two servers named DC1.mcsalab.local and Server1.mcsalab.local. Both the servers are running on Windows Server 2016. Server1 is the member of mcsalab.local domain and will be configured as IPAM server. DC1 server has a pre-configured DHCP server that we will add and manage through the IPAM server.

Installing IPAM Feature in Windows Server 2016

To install the IPAM feature on the Server1, you need to perform the following steps:

Launch the Add Roles and Features Wizard using the Server Manager tool.

Navigate to the Select features page and select the IP Address Management (IPAM) Server role.

Click the Next button and complete the installation process.

Configuring IPAM Server in Windows Server 2016

Once you have installed IPAM feature on your server, the next step is to configure IPAM server. As discussed earlier, the IPAM server can manage DHCP, DNS, and DC servers. However, in this post, we will manage DHCP server through the IPAM server. To configure IPAM server in Windows Server 2016, you need to perform the following steps:

Select the IPAM in the left pane and then click the ConnecttoIPAM server. Select SERVER1.MCSALAB.local if not selected already and then click the OK button.

The next task is to Provision the IPAM server. For this, click ProvisiontheIPAMserver and navigate to the Configuredatabase page. Here you need to specify the type of IPAM database. You can either select SQL server or Windows Internal Database. For the testing lab, select the Windows Internal Database (WID) option and proceed to the next.

On the Selectprovisioningmethod page, select the provision method for the managed server. You can either select the manual provisioning method or the Group Policy Based provisioning method. For the testing purpose, select the Group Policy Based provisioning method as manual provisioning required the additional configurations. Specify a GPO prefix name and proceed to the next.

Click Next and finish the wizard.

After provisioning IPAM server, the next step is to configure server discovery. For this, click Configureserverdiscovery link.

On the Configure Server Discovery dialog box, click Get forests and wait until the forest name discovered. Click Add to add the discovered domain and then click OK.

After adding the domain, the next step is to start the server discovery process. For this, click the Startserverdiscovery link. Discovery may take 5 to 10 minutes to complete.

After the discovery process, the next step is to add servers that you want to manage. For this, click the SelectoraddserverstomanageandverifyIPAMaccess link.

Notice that IPAMAccessStatus is Blocked for both servers, as shown in the following figure.

Leave the ServerManager console active and execute the following command at the Windows PowerShell prompt.

On the Add or Edit Server dialog box, select the server types that you want to manage. For example, select DC, DNS and DHCP options. In the Manageabilitystatus drop-down list, select Managed and then click OK.

Verifying IPAM Configuration

Now you have configured IPAM server with DHCP server. The next step is to verify your IPAM configuration. To do so, you need to perform the following steps:

Switch and sign in to the DC1 server and execute the following Windows PowerShell cmdlet to update the group policy.

Gpupdate /force

Switch back to the SERVER1, right-click DC1 in the IPAM window and then select RefreshServerAccessStatus.

Refresh the Server Manager console. Wait for 10-15 minutes. Refresh again until the status changes to unblocked. Now, you can manage your DHCP server through the IPAM server in Windows Server 2016.

That’s all you need to install and configure IPAM server in Windows Server 2016. Don’t hesitate to drop your queries if get stuck anywhere. In the upcoming posts, we will also configure IPAM server with other services such as NPS. Stay connected with us. Do share the article and also subscribe us to get notified for the upcoming articles.

In the previous post, we have discussed how to configure DHCP server in Windows Server 2016. In this post, we will explain a step by step guide to configure DHCP Failover in Windows Server 2016. We assume that you have already read how to configure DHCP server post. If you missed it, please visit it, so you can get a clear idea what topology we are going to use for DHCP Failover configuration. The DHCP server configuration details are as follows:

Understand Lab Setup Topology

In order to demonstrate DHCP Failover configuration, we will add an additional DHCP server named server1.mcsalab.local (10.0.0.101/8) to provide high availability and redundancy. In the DHCP failover deployment, two DHCP servers work together in the Master (Primary) and Backup (Secondary) roles. Both the servers share the load of DHCP service and maintain the IP address allocation. One of the DHCP server from the DHCP Failover group takes the responsibility of the partner DHCP server when the partner server fails to allocate TCP/IP settings to the DHCP clients.

Since the dc1.mcsalab.local server is already configured as Primary DHCP server, we will start directly to configure DHCP failover. So, we will not cover how to configure DHCP server in this post. You have to visit the previous post for the step by step DCHP configuration.

Steps to Configure DHCP Failover

To configure DHCP Failover in Windows Server, you need to perform the following steps:

On the partner DHCP server1 (Server1), open the Server Manager tool and launch the Add roles and features wizard. Select the DHCP server role and install it using the default selections.

Once the DHCP server role is installed, you need to authorize it. To do so, click the notification icon in the Server Manager tool and then click complete DHCP installation link.

Once the DHCP server role is installed and authorized on Server1, move on to Primary DHCP server (DC1) and open the DHCP Management console.

Under the IPv4 node, select and right click your scope name and then select Configure Failover.

On the next page, select the scope for which you want to configure failover and then click Next.

On the next page, click Add Server. Type your partner server name (Server1) and then click OK to add the partner server. Click Next to continue.

On the Create a new failover relationship page, specify a failover relationship name, MCLT value, role of the partner server (failover mode), and the shared secret key. Refer the following figure and spend some time to understand the failover relationship options that we have selected.

Click Next and finish the wizard. Verify that you have successfully added the partner server.

Now, move on to Server1 and refresh the DHCP Management console. Expand the IPv4 node and verify that the DHCP scope of the Primary DHCP server (DC1) is reflected on Server1 and ready to allocate IP addresses.

Verifying DHCP Failover Configuration

Move on to CL1, open the Command Prompt window, and execute the following commands to release and renew the TCP/IP settings.ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

In the following figure, you can see that the same IP address is allocated by the partner server, even the primary DHCP server (dc1.mcsalab.local) is still out of service.

Recall: DHCP Failover is a service that allows one DHCP server to take the responsibility of other DHCP servers from the configured DHCP failover relationship group. Thus, this feature provides the load balancing, high availability, and redundancy for the DHCP service. That’s all you need to do to understand and configure DHCP failover in Windows Server 2016. Hope, you loved it.